When I first decided to sign up for Digital Frontiers, I was expecting a traditional-style class in which I would learn all about technology, the internet, and how they both are affecting the business world today; to tell you the truth, I wasn’t all that excited about it. But once I learned that this class would be anything but “traditional,” I had a feeling this would be one of the most beneficial classes I’d be taking during my years at University of Florida.
This class has taught me about so many things that I didn’t even realize existed. (It’s like that diagram we keep seeing, with the sections of “things you know,” “things you don’t know,” and “things you don’t know that you don’t know”.) I mean, everyone knows that there are millions of random Facebook fan pages out there, but until this semester, I had no idea how helpful they are to both new and big companies. There are so many networking opportunities created by one simple webpage! And I definitely didn’t know there was a way to keep track of that type of stuff (let’s just say that “web analytics” might as well have been a foreign language). The same concept applies to websites such as Twitter, as well. By actively updating and managing accounts and pages like these, companies have the chance to grow exponentially; rewind a few years, before social networking sites became popular, and this would not have been the case.
The amount of potential that everyday websites (which some people even consider to be trivial) offer to businesses nowadays both shocks and excites me. This class has made me realize that the business world is changing so much due to technology and innovation, and it shows no signs of slowing down. But because of Digital Frontiers, I feel as if I have a better understanding of that world now, and I can be ready for almost anything it throws at me.
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I think the most important thing I learned from this class was that to succeed to in social media you have to be unique. When you look at some of the most successful social media campaigns like Burger King’s Subservient Chicken or the Doritos’ Super Bowl Commercials, they succeeded because they were unique and interesting.
This class taught us that not just by having us read it in a book, but through assignments like the Post-it Note Challenge. We had to think creatively to with a new medium to achieve value, which is the way this class should be taught. We heard from some of the leading business-people in Gainesville lecture on how they have harnessed innovative ideas to for success. More or less, their message was the same – think big and think creative. I came into this class wanting to learn how to better utilize social media tools for my father’s business and I think I have done just that.
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After countless lectures on basically the same thing, it has been drilled into my head that understanding social media is imperative for success in the business arena.
I have realized that it’s time to wake up and get with the program or someone else will wipe you out. Changes are occurring at such a fast pace now it requires more and more creativity to keep up.
The one concept that I found most interesting and plan to incorporate into my future business plans is including customers in the process. Having a company that is open to the masses is such a foreign concept to many individuals because of the way the “corporate” behavior seen in the past of many businesses. After this class, however, I have discovered that more and more companies are changing their mentality and are successful because of it.
The business world is more different than it has ever been and will continue to evolve. Keeping up is just half the battle. DigitalFrontiers has been an eye-opening experience and has motivated me to be just as successful with these tools as our guest speakers one day.
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When I began this journey, I had a hard time believing I would ever be able to master the complicated language of computers. Web analytics? What?!?!?! But, after being saddled with the most technologically involved project, “web analytics” lost it’s illusive nature.
Marketing through the web was also a difficult concept for me to grasp. I just couldn’t (and still can’t) get out of the groove of traditional marketing. However, this class opened my eyes to the fact that different types of marketing ARE effective.
Overall this class was extremely beneficial to my education. I learned to think outside of the box more often and embrace the technological advances that are happening every day.
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Digital Frontiers at the University of Florida has truly developed my inner digital entrepreneur. As the end draws near to most classes in college, students breathe a sigh of relief and methodically schedule their next dose of hell. Well, contrary to the norm, I am slightly disappointed to end this class. I’ve learned countless pieces of information, advice and knowledge revolving around entrepreneurship and social media. The speakers were extraordinary, ranging from the small business risk-taker to the multi-millionaire. While a specific skill was not developed or learned, I gained an unimaginable amount of intangible knowledge. The world of business continues to thrive off of networking; this class did just that. 
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Fortunately for you, on the internet nobody knows you are a dog. Unfortunately for everyone else, the people labeled as experts (read: any fool with a blog) are also not revealed as dogs. Somehow, when people read a well-written blog or grammatically correct passage, they seem to believe its content. It is much akin to the “halo effect” wherein attractive people are trusted more so than others.
Our homework in this class is to learn from guest speakers (considered “experts” in their fields) and write about what we think they said. However, because we have a nice blog site and the legitimacy of the University of Florida supporting our efforts, any unlucky soul who reads my cynical words will also think me an expert.
Hopefully internet users are becoming equally as deft at finding useful information as they are at ignoring faux-info written by college boys like me. Anybody reading this site should know I am neither an expert nor a particularly committed learner; I just like to write and hear what other people have to say about it. I implore you to not believe me just because I have platform from which to speak.
woof woof
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The internet has transformed the way in which we live and work by providing us with easy access to an almost infinite supply of information. Complex topics are often found in summary form, saving us hours of research and reviews allow us to benefit from the experiences of others. For example, Yelp allows guests to rate and describe their experience with local businesses, so others can make an informed decision. The same is true for sites like Amazon and Newegg, which allow users to rate products they have purchases so that fellow shoppers can feel comfortable with a purchase decision. Further, sites like Wikipedia allow guests to benefit from the collective knowledge of others.
While these technologies have the ability to simplify our lives, they can also lead to laziness. When the answer to almost any question is readily available, not much effort is required to obtain it. Instead of attempting to works things out for ourselves, we turn to the web by default. In the past, we would learn through experience and develop a working knowledge of a topic. Now, the tendency is merely to search out a solution and stop once it has been found, acquiring only a surface level understanding of the topic at hand. For example, novice programmers will often copy code snips into their programs to get the functionality they desire, without fully understanding how it is implemented. If they instead chose to read through documentation and fully implemented the desired functionality from scratch, they would surely become more proficient programmers in the long term.
While society is becoming more dependent on the internet, there is no need to panic. We do not need to become experts on every problem we encounter and often simply finding a credible answer is enough. In the end is up to the individual to determine whether exploring a topic further will add value to their life and be disciplined enough to follow through on that decision.
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The world’s greatest innovations have never been exclusively created by one single person. They have always been built upon someone else’s work; modifying somebody else’s great idea and making it work for you.
Yet some people believe that the internet stifles our creativity (Elton John amongst them). We can access lifetimes of research and work with just a choice phrase punched into trusty old Google, why would we possibly want or need to think? Are we so bombarded with other people’s great ideas that we can no longer create our own?
I seriously doubt it. Would that mean that libraries, reference books, and textbooks are also impeding our ability to create and think? It provides us with a base for our own ideas, just as HTML, PHP, and other coding languages do for web developers. More traditional inventors weren’t/aren’t required to reinvent the wheel for their own innovations so why is the internet held to a different standard? Inspiration can come just as easily, if not more so, from online sources than more traditional ones.
The idea that the internet actually promotes creativity isn’t even restricted to web developers. Not too long ago, creating a new business was a pretty big deal. Tons of time, money, and effort had to be put into a new idea; not that it still isn’t now, but the internet has made entrepreneurship a whole lot easier. Ideas without financial backing withered away, but now you can share your ideas with the world for free or not very much at all. If your idea is truly creative, then it will stand out.
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This week we were aske
d if the Internet stifled creativity. I counter with my own question: Can a fire be stifled with oxygen? The obvious answer then, for those non-science majors, is no. The internet, like oxygen for a fire, is a medium by which creativity is fueled and spread. Original material appears every day, in real life and on the internet. Websites like DeviantArt are devoted to artistic expression, expanding solely on user-created art work. Youtube is Xanadu for would-be directors and film makers. Many news corporations have journalistic articles that appear only online, pandering to the viewers who are slowly phasing out of the newspaper. Every day, users on social websites collaborate and plan ideas, showing the power of working together without needing to be with the group. Why are we even having this conversation?
I’m a member of an internet message board, and day after day, I’m astounded at the amount of collaboration and new ideas that sprout from people, seemingly random strangers, sharing their thoughts. One innovation that sticks out in my mind would be the idea of “userpics”, essentially a way for the message board users to host an image of themselves in order to make the message board feel more personal. The idea started from one person mentioning the idea of users having their photo next to their name. Pretty soon, a user who was a skilled programmer decided to try his hand at making a code for such an idea. With people giving all their ideas, the programmer made the idea into a program. Now, just about every user has downloaded the program and can see what everyone looks like, bringing everyone together a tad more.
Certain websites are used for nothing but the creation of new ideas like Nikolai’s Third Minds website. In particular, there is a website that lives on the idea of “if you can imagine it, we will make it”, with the medium being drawings and, sometimes, animations.If you use the internet, you can clearly see that it is a fantastic and developing means of expression. Having only been around for some 20 or so years, and having expanded so far, the creative content that will emerge from the internet in the next 20 years will be massive. The internet simply does not stifle creativity; it just provides a new medium of exchange and showcasing.
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The advances that the world has made in technology over the last century have undoubtly made life easier for most people. This statement holds true regarding most everything from the invention of the car to the creation of the iPhone. And with the new technology came a greater appreciation for the internet. Think about it: how many people do you know that don’t use the internet?
When it comes to older generations, less people have accepted the internet. However, as far as our generation is concerned… Most of us can’t imagine life without it. We use it for almost everything, including staying connected to friends, listening to music, and looking up questions for homework. But is the fact that we can use the internet to find anything and everything ruining our ability to come up with ideas and answers for ourselves?
Although humans are programmed to be natural problem-solvers, it seems as though the internet is fostering a new kind of laziness- a laziness of intellect. Instead of using reasoning and thinking through a problem in order to figure out a solution, most of us nowadays just google whatever it is we’re looking for, whether it be an explanation of how to fix a broken cell phone or the answer to one of the questions in our geology assignment. Because all these quick fixes are available to us in an instant thanks to websites such as About.com and Wikipedia, we no longer have to actually understand the process of figuring them out for ourselves.
On top of this increasing laziness, people have become more impatient. The fact that we tend to get overly irritated when our internet connection is not working fast enough (and you’ve got to admit, we’re all guilty of this) only confirms the fact that people’s patience is decreasing. And if you’re not willing to wait long for a website, which would give you an instant answer for whatever problem you were trying to solve, to load, then you probably think it would take way too long to come up with the solution on your own.
I know all of this makes it sound like I’m hating on technology or I’m ashamed of the intellect of the human race, but I promise I’m not. (Trust me, I’m completely guilty of looking up pretty much everything online because it’s easier that way.) All I’m saying is that I think as technology progresses, we should make a conscious effort to stay innovative and try not to rely too heavily on the internet.
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